Sander Diamond: Dewey defeats Truman’ a lesson from the past

Barack Obama knows he is just inches away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He also knows that the projection of overconfidence can doom a candidate’s aspirations up to the last minute.

Sander Diamond

Barack Obama knows he is just inches away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He also knows that the projection of overconfidence can doom a candidate’s aspirations up to the last minute.

Perhaps somewhere he has tucked away one of the most memorable photographs of any presidential campaign. The man who was supposed to be the “sure loser,” according to the pundits and pollsters in the election of 1948, Harry S. Truman, is beaming from ear to ear. In his hands he is holding, for all to see, an all-too-early edition of the Chicago Tribune featuring a headline that reads: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” The man who was elevated to the presidency upon the death of FDR in April 1945 was now president in his own right.

Obama and John McCain have little in common with Truman and Thomas E. Dewey. In the past 60 years, there has been a sea change in the political life and social fabric of the nation. It is in the march-up to the election where a commonality can be found.

Today, we are facing some of the most challenging problems in decades, especially with the economy and wars in faraway places with names most Americans can barely recognize.

Complex problems never take a holiday; in the election of 1948, the problems we were facing were daunting. Europe was in ruins, the United Kingdom reduced to a state of penury, and the Red Army stayed where it had stopped. Stalin imposed Stalinism on his new possessions in Eastern Europe. In Asia, Imperial Japan was occupied by United States troops, and China was in the throes of a brutal civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists. Today, our problems are significant but have to be put into perspective.

In the run-up to the election, Truman was being challenged abroad and at home. Strikes had swept the coal and railroad industries in the immediate postwar months and had begun again in the late spring and summer of 1948. Workers wanted higher wages as inflation ate into their earnings; the strikes spread to the steel industry.

As Election Day approached, it appeared that the unpopular man from Missouri would return to his native state. After 16 years of a Democratic ascendancy, the Republicans would take the White House. They believed they had found a winner in Dewey.

Dewey was elected governor of New York in 1942, the first Republican governor in 20 years, and was re-elected in 1946. He put the state in the black, cut taxes and put through a law prohibiting discrimination in employment, the first in the nation. Dewey was well-liked and respected, a Republican maverick of sorts. In this reformer, the GOP was convinced they could unseat Truman, who had managed to alienate much of the core base of the Democratic Party, the unions.

In appearance, Dewey looked like a partner from a white-shoe Wall Street law firm and dressed for the role, always impeccably tailored and never without his homburg. His manner of speaking was in sharp contrast with the “plain-speaking” Truman, who was known for his sharp tongue.

Dewey’s voice had the mark of cultivation, distinctly upper class, much like FDR’s. When campaigning, he was the model of patience, always urbane and never ruffled. In the march-up to the election, he projected an air of confidence, affecting a posture of success, as if the deal were closed.

Truman, on the other hand, was rough around the edges, revealing his roots, first as a captain in the U.S. Army in France in the First World War, later running a small men’s store, and steeled in the rough-and-tumble politics of Missouri, where he served as a judge.

On election night, the future seemed dim for the president. Some had written him off; others maintained he would be a footnote, remembered as FDR’s largely unknown successor, the man who dropped the atomic bombs. But Truman received 24,105,812 votes; Dewey, 21,970,065; and the third parties suffered the fate of most marginal groups in national elections. His victory was reaffirmed by the Electoral College, 303 to 189.

Today, Truman is remembered as one of our best presidents, a man who faced unprecedented challenges at the dawn of both the Atomic Age and the Cold War. NATO and a restored Europe, thanks to the Marshall Plan, are among his greatest legacies. Dewey, on the other hand, is all but forgotten less the lessons that are attached to his name: Pundits, talking heads and pollsters can be wrong and convey a false confidence that can doom a campaign if a candidate is convinced of his inevitability before the votes are counted.

Sander A. Diamond is a professor of history at Keuka College. He is a guest columnist for the Daily Messenger.

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